Journalists sometimes contact us asking to speak to people who have experience of Oxevision.
These are things which have been helpful for me (a Stop Oxevision member) to consider when speaking to journalists on personal lived experience of the mental health system. Please take what is useful to you and leave what is not!
1) You don’t have to do it. This sounds super obvious, but it’s easy to feel like you have to do something in the face of injustice and like your lived experience is all you have to offer. But there are many ways to support a cause and this is not the only one.
2) Once it’s out there it’s hard to get it back. Again, this is obvious but easy to forget in the heat of the moment when something awful has happened to you and you want to fight it. Even if a piece is retracted or corrected, people will see the original and archived versions might exist which are hard to get rid of.
3) You (and we) can’t control who else the journalist speaks to or how they frame the piece. There is always a risk of being taken out of context, of other people’s viewpoints being prioritised over yours, or of the voices of those with more power also having more power in the article. You can ask the journalist what they think their angle will be, but they may not know at the point they speak to you or may not be honest about it.
a. Sometimes you kind of get a sense of what direction the journalist is heading in and what kind of narrative they want from you, based on the questions they ask and other details they might give about their plans for their work. This can sometimes play into stereotypes around vulnerability or other aspects of mental health discourse. You don’t have to give them the narrative they want unless it’s also what you want!
b. You might speak to them for ages and they end up using a sentence or two from you, or nothing at all. This can be intensely frustrating and sometimes painful if you have shared difficult experiences. I think it’sless likely lived experience would get cut entirely with OxeVisionexperiences because the “human interest” is likely to be what hooks people into the story, but it’s always a possibility it’s good to know in advance.
4) The journalist normally doesn’t write the headline or choose the pictures – there are subeditors and picture editors who do this (depending on the size of the publication/outlet). So your words might end up under a headline you don’tfully agree with (or which doesn’t really reflect the piece – journalists are also often frustrated by this too).
5) Journalists may ask for evidence of what happened to you or want to seek comment from the treating hospital or trust. This can be quite painful and feel like not being believed. Usually it is just the journalist or their editor covering their back and isn’t an indicator that they don’t believe you, but if they want to do so and you don’t want them to, you can pull out of the interview/piece.
a. I think this is probably less likely when sharing experiences of something like Oxevision – the only time this happened to me was when discussing a specific response I’d received to a complaint, where they wanted to see the letter and go to the hospital for comment. I refused and they didn’t run the piece. With Oxevision, which hospitals are using it is public knowledge, so it’s less likely they’ll want evidence, but they might want to go to the relevant trust for comment.
b. You can also request that they do not share anything you show them evidence-wise, but then you are just taking their word for it that they won’t. I would trust some journalists with this and not others.
6) You can ask that you get to see the piece before it goes to press, but most journalists can’t or won’t agree to this – partly for practical reasons (editors can make last minute changes to the piece).
7) Depending on the publication, journalists sometimes run on super tight schedules. Don’t let them rush you: if you need time to think, that’s more important than their schedule. They might turn round and say in that case we can’t interview you – to my mind that’s a better outcome than feeling rushed and pressured into doing something you’re not completely comfortable with.
8) They might hang on to your contact details and get in touch for comment again on future stories. If you’d rather they didn’t do this it’s best to explicitly say so.
9) You can use a pseudonym or request to remain anonymous. This is not unusual for journalism on sensitive topics and I would be very wary of any journalist who won’t guarantee anonymity.
a. However you should bear in mind that if you have posted on social media about your experiences and the same experiences then appear in the press, there’s a risk any stories could be linked to your social media accounts.
This list is not exhaustive! I feel like I’ve been quite negative in it – so I want to say I’ve actually had quite good experiences with media work, I just thought it was important around such a sensitive issue that people go in with eyes open to the things that could go wrong. There is always the possibility of something else unexpected coming up though. Stop Oxevision are happy to be around to chat anything through in relation to speaking to press, and provide informal peer support and solidarity as fellow service users/survivors working together for the same cause. But none of us are comms or journalism experts and we can’t guarantee how speaking to journalists will pan out.